Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  Major Allen approached him. ‘Good show, John! Good show! Now, you must give a talk to the cadets on Wednesday night.’

  That talk was an even greater success.

  ‘How about writing an article for the Cadet News?’ said the Major, shaking his hand afterwards. ‘You can illustrate it with some of your first-class photographs.’

  There was nothing that John would have liked better, and when he got home he set to work with gusto.

  That week he was promoted to Corporal. So onwards and upwards, soaring into the bright blue sky.

  A Special Sort of Person?

  But then was into schoolwork with a vengeance. He had to achieve and get good exam results; and not just for Dolly and her school, but for himself. It was a matter of self-esteem and his survival as a tolerable human being.

  Projects had to be submitted for C.S.E. history and geography. This wasn’t a chore, but his big chance. So, pull out all the stops and go for broke. Not just ‘good’, but the best ever! For his history project he chose the exploration of Africa. It was off to the library and into old books: Livingstone’s Missionary Travels, Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent. Photocopies of old maps and diaries. René Caillié struck a deep chord within him: the lone, poverty-stricken Frenchman, weak and unprepossessing, who defied all the odds to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu and cross the ferocious wastes of the Sahara. He illustrated that chapter with his photographs of the desert and the Tuareg guide. For the chapter on Stanley he got prints of Dolly’s slides of Uganda and the Ruwenzori Range.. His geography project was about Morocco. He devoured guide books and illustrated it with a cornucopia of his photographs.

  The O Levels were a big challenge. This meant extra one-to-one lessons with Mekon, practising the arcane art of writing examination essays; boring, but a vital part of his exam-passing kit.

  Work, rugby matches, weekends with the Army Cadets: it was a full and productive life. The article for the Cadet Journal was duly published, lavishly illustrated with his photographs. It was plaudits all round. Major Allen crowed, Dolly cooed. He began to think he was a special sort of person – gifted, talented and being groomed for big things. ‘One day I’ll be famous!’ On course for that, more than ever, through the black and buffeting clouds and up into the dazzling blue dome of the sky.

  Not That Simple

  But, alas, it wasn’t that simple. One Wednesday morning in early November an article appeared in the Guardian. ‘Expedition for Deprived Youngsters Hijacked by Middle Classes’ ran the headline. A ‘dedicated investigative reporter’ had apparently uncovered yet another example of ‘perfidious middle-class machinations’. As part of its ongoing ‘commitment to equality and social justice’, etc., etc., etc., the Boldonbridge Youth Outreach Committee had organised an expedition to Morocco, specifically aimed at ‘deprived inner-city youngsters’. The expedition leaders were all ‘experienced and properly qualified’ and their ‘rigorous selection procedures’ had produced a team of ‘first-class young people dedicated to the pursuit of excellence’. But, unfortunately, an ‘ambitious middle-class teacher from a privileged private school’ had managed to short-circuit the selection procedures, and ‘in direct contravention of stated procedures’ had slipped two of his ‘moneyed protégés’ onto the expedition. Worse still, the said ‘moneyed protégés’ had got involved with drug dealing, which had resulted in ‘innocent members of the expedition being falsely accused and sent back to Britain’. And – as if that wasn’t enough! – they and their ‘totally unqualified teacher’ had taken over the expedition and, ‘blatantly ignoring the sound advice of a properly qualified youth leader’, had indulged in ‘antics of the most irresponsible folly’ by climbing ‘dangerous mountains’ and ‘wantonly risking the lives of children’. In short, a whole can of worms had been uncovered.

  Because nobody at Beaconsfield read the Guardian – they did not aspire to such lofty heights – the bomb remained undiscovered for a couple of days.

  Future Criminal Charges?

  Then, on the Friday morning Dorothy received an ‘official notification’ from the Boldonbridge Youth Outreach Committee. All the old scabs were unpicked. With interest – indeed, with compound interest. The proven mendacity of her pupils who had bought drugs, dumped on deprived inner-city youngsters and then used their ‘middle-class social skills’ to foist the blame onto these poor, unwitting dupes. ‘New and disturbing revelations’ had emerged of how a ‘totally unqualified Beaconsfield teacher’ had ignored the advice of a ‘properly qualified youth leader’ and wantonly involved ‘the children in his care in all kinds of quite unacceptable dangers’. A list of appalling expeditional misdemeanours followed: ‘sleeping in unhygienic and disease-ridden local houses’; ‘forcing British children to eat unpalatable and filthy local food’ which had been the cause of ‘serious intestinal disorders’; ‘outrageously dangerous antics’ on high mountains onto which ‘only highly trained and properly qualified mountain leaders should be permitted to venture’.

  And to cap it all there were ‘strong hints’ of a ‘grossly improper relationship’ between the said teacher and a Beaconsfield youth who, incidentally, had been ‘a thoroughly bad and disruptive influence’ throughout the expedition and who was ‘almost certainly the chief instigator of the purchase of illegal drugs’. In short it was a whole mountain of iniquity meriting ‘further investigations… and future criminal charges’.

  The Vampire Rises from its Grave

  Dorothy reeled. She’d confidently assumed that all this nonsense was dead and buried. Yet here was the corpse, climbing vampire-style out of its grave. Dracula himself could hardly have done a better job.

  This was all she needed. She’d just had an exhausting few days. Recently a new boy, named Kenny Merrick, had arrived in Form Two. Having been bullied almost to extinction at his comprehensive, he’d set himself up as a ‘hard’, distributing cigarettes and porno mags to Form One. Then he’d found a suitable target in the shape of a scrawny little fellow named Freddy Monks. On Wednesday evening he’d urinated in Freddy’s school bag and tried to flush it down the toilet.

  For much of Thursday mornings she’d been bombarded with furious telephone calls, first from Freddy’s mother and then from his father, complaining at vast length about ‘the complete lack of discipline’ in her school and about her enrolment of ‘nutters who ought to be behind bars’. Later investigations, however, had shown that young Freddy was not quite the squeaky clean innocent that his parents fondly imagined him to be. On Wednesday morning, during the PE lesson, he’d stolen Kenny’s underpants and dropped them into the changing room urinal. At times like these Dorothy felt as if she was swimming in a sewer.

  Now it was John Denby again! A ‘thoroughly bad influence’ … ‘purchase of illegal drugs’ … ‘foisting the blame onto innocent deprived children’ … and, especially alarming, that ‘grossly improper relationship’. All her old fears revived. She could almost see a grinning James Briggs standing in front of her and saying, ‘I told you so, didn’t I?’

  Then the countervailing force: her child, who, inspired by her high pedagogic standards, and against all the odds, had done great things in Morocco. The young man who this summer was going to get a clutch of brilliant exam results, which would prove to all the doubters that her school was not a dustbin for deadbeats, but was, in its own way, a centre of excellence which got the very best out if its pupils, able and less able alike.

  No, like it or not, far too much of herself had been invested in John Denby for her to abandon him now. But subconsciously, she muttered a prayer: ‘Please John, please prove that you are innocent!’

  ‘Not in the Eyes of the Law’

  Somehow she managed to get through the rest of the day. That afternoon was yet more trouble to sort out. This time it was a fight between two Fourth Year boys, which had resulted in one of them having to be taken to see the doctor. Did the kids at her school eve
r stop being vile to each other?

  And it wasn’t only the kids who had a problem. With the school inspectors descending in less than a month’s, time she still hadn’t got a scheme of work out of Clarkson’s English Department.

  After school, she summoned Meakin.

  ‘Roderick, just look at what I received this morning.’

  Meakin perused the document and proceeded to light his pipe.

  ‘I really thought we’d sorted all this nonsense out last month!’ sighed Dorothy anxiously. ‘What with the solicitor’s letter and all that evidence! So just what is all this about?’

  A long pause. Billowing pipe smoke. Then Meakin pronounced, ‘It’ll be Dobson and Morris getting their revenge on Bob Steadman.’

  ‘But it was all settled.

  ‘Not in their eyes. For both of them the expedition was a pretty good disaster. Dobson’s great scheme of being a proletarian Messiah went pear-shaped, and if what Jonny boy says is correct, Morris didn’t exactly cover himself with glory either.’

  ‘But what are they hoping to prove? They can’t alter facts!’

  ‘That all depends on how you define facts.’

  ‘But facts are facts.’

  ‘Not in the eyes of the law. A fact is only a fact if it can be proved in court.’

  Pause. Puffs of acrid smoke.

  ‘I mean, all we’ve got is Jonny boy’s version,’ said Meakin eventually.

  ‘But what about the police records in Marrakesh and the records in the British Consulate at Rabat? Won’t that put things straight?’

  ‘We never actually contacted them. We don’t really know if they have any records of what happened.’

  ‘But what about those other youngsters who were on the expedition? The ones who weren’t sent home? They can support John’s story, can’t they?’

  ‘In theory, yes. But we’d better check them out. I suppose that – shall we say? – a little pressure has been put on them.’

  ‘And what about John? I do hope he has been telling the truth.?

  ‘I’d leave His Nibs out of this for the present. If you’re not careful you’ll go and have a temper tantrum to deal with. And that won’t do anybody any good.’

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘Oh, Roderick, what are we going to do?’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ replied Meakin amid an extra large cloud of pipe smoke. ‘I’ll handle it. It should all sort itself out.’

  For a brief moment Dorothy became the ‘emotional woman’ she so despised. Meakin was so strong, so masculine! So like her long-lost Lawrence at his best. If only he wasn’t married to that ghastly Molly woman!

  ‘Don’t Get Him Involved, Please!’

  The next few days saw comings and goings. Meetings with Acroyd, the school solicitor; exchanges of letters with the Youth Outreach Committee; a letter dispatched to the British Consulate at Rabat. It all drew a blank. The Outreach Committee merely reiterated what they’d said in the letter. No reply was forthcoming from either the Moroccan police or the British Consulate at Rabat. Telephoning in that direction got nowhere. Jim, Rob and the two girls all appeared to support Dobson’s story; and so, alarmingly, did Michael Connolly.

  ‘It all looks pretty bleak!’ sighed Dorothy.

  Meakin stayed silent for a while, enveloped in the usual cloud of pipe smoke.

  All the old doubts resurfaced in Dorothy’s mind. ‘Well, it seems as if John could have been involved in drug dealing after all! And I don’t like that ‘improper relationship’ business one little bit. Teenagers can be so deceitful!’ Pause. ‘Frankly I wish we’d never got involved with that wretched Morocco business!’ she added vehemently.

  Pause. More clouds of tobacco smoke.

  ‘I wouldn’t jump to any hasty conclusions if I were you,’ replied Meakin eventually, ‘I mean, look at the situation. Jim, Rob and the two girls are all at Morton Community College. Who’s just become the Deputy Head there? Our friend Dobson. Who wants to be head of the PE Department there? Our friend Morris. That Morocco business was their big chance to prove themselves. They’re hardly likely to admit that they made a dog’s dinner of it, are they? They need a scapegoat. As I expected, pressure has been applied in certain quarters.’

  ‘You mean bullying young people into telling lies?’

  ‘Not exactly bullying. Dobson’s a very charismatic figure; at least, with those youngsters who have the correct pedigree. Charming. Very persuasive.’

  ‘But what about Michael Connolly? He’s not at Morton. He’s with us!’

  ‘They’ll have got at him through the Care Home.’

  ‘But why did he agree with everything John said before?’

  ‘I should forget about Michael.’ replied Meakin shaking his head dismissively. ‘He’s a poor lost soul. Hardly knows his front end from his back end, that one. I mean, just look at the kerfuffle over his Mum’s new partner, Darran. Darran does him over good and proper and flings him out of the house. But what does he go and tell the Probation Officer? He says it was he who did the attacking and not Darran. Gets himself a criminal record just to please his mum who doesn’t want her mate to get into trouble. Count him out of this.’

  Silence.

  ‘But, Roderick, where do we go from here?’ exclaimed Dorothy eventually.

  ‘We’ll have to get chapter and verse from John,’ he replied. ‘Find out just what did go on. I suspect that there could be a few skeletons lurking in that particular cupboard that we don’t know about.’

  Dorothy took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid, you’re probably right. But this would go and happen just when the inspectors are coming!’

  ‘Sod’s Law, I’m afraid,’ said Meakin gravely. ‘But we’d better handle His Nibs with kid gloves. He’s our prize exhibit and we don’t want him going doolally just when Their Lordships arrive.’

  ‘But what about Bob Steadman? Can’t we get hold of him?’

  ‘That would solve a few problems, I agree. Not exactly right for him to swan off like that and leave us to face the music. Makes you wonder if there aren’t any skeletons lurking in his cupboard.’

  ‘But how on earth do we get hold of him? He’s in… where? Paraguay or somewhere.’

  ‘That’s a problem, yes. The only person likely to know is the Bishop.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ cried Dorothy. ‘Don’t let’s get him involved! Please!’ The alarm bells were ringing as humiliating memories flooded back of his bullying, and of how he’d reduced her from a Headmistress to an incompetent schoolgirl.

  Meakin stayed silent and relit his pipe.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally said, ‘I quite understand your sentiments. But, frankly, he’s our best hope. And, you know, he’s the one who could winkle a reply out of Rabat for us. They might just take notice of a big noise like him. He’s quite a force in the land, you know.’

  Dorothy stayed glumly silent.

  ‘All right,’ continued Meakin, ‘Let’s consider the alternative, shall we? Jonny boy gets done for drug dealing and being a rent boy. Lands in a Young Offenders institution. Newspapers hear of it. School pilloried as a place which turns a blind eye to juvenile crime and child abuse. Parents start to remove their kids. Council stops sending us new boys. School forced to close; which is exactly what a lot of people at County Hall and up at the university want.’

  More silence.

  Eventually, a resigned and weary Dorothy capitulated. ‘Yes, Roderick, you’re probably right. But, please, can you deal with the Bishop and not me. I really couldn’t go through all that again!’

  ‘Not Your Little Wonder Boy Again?’

  Meakin duly arranged a meeting at the Bishop’s house. For a tense moment he thought he’d stepped on a landmine. In the depths of the big, leather armchair the massive brow wrinkled, the eyebrows quivered, the hairs coming out of his ears bristled.

  ‘No
t your little wonder boy again? What’s it this time, eh? Not another little accident? Some people never seem to learn, do they?’

  ‘Not quite. Please hear me out.’

  As the tale unfolded the great craggy face broke into an avuncular smile. Yes, of course he was willing to help. Yes, he’d rustle up young Steadman. ‘I’ll put a bomb under him all right. Yes, send it all the way to the St Francis Xavia Mission Station at wherever-it-is in the back end of the Chaco Grande!’

  The mere mention of the British Embassy at Rabat set off an explosion of almost nuclear dimensions. ‘No reply to your letter? For heaven’s sake, man, did you seriously think that their Lordships of the FO would actually condescend to reply to a letter from a mere schoolteacher? What planet are you living on? The Foreign Office!’ He spat the words out as if they were some noxious fly he’d inadvertently swallowed. ‘You know, when I was in Uganda…’ There followed a venomous five minute rant. The Foreign Office was one of Donald Mackay’s pet hates. You pronounced those two words at your peril.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally concluded, ‘I’ll sort that lot out and with pleasure! But,’ he continued with a conspiratorial wink, ‘we’d better keep the whole thing under the wraps for the time being. And when we’ve gathered enough material we’ll set a trap for little Jonny! We’ll find out just what he did get up to when backs were turned.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s guilty, do you?’

  ‘Of course not! He’s much too naïve. Young for his age. Immature. Still living in a Boy’s Own adventure world. He’s just the lamb caught in the thicket. But he must know things we don’t know. Incidentally, don’t breathe a word of this to my wife. Great lass. Great Christian and all that. But, well… she’s a little too emotional for this business!’